My first accident..:(

Travelling in a local bus made me nostalgic about the good old days when I used to leave for home on holidays with excitement from my boarding school. Whenever I thought about those times before, all I could recollect was the boring part of it,especially when I was commuting alone. But after what I experienced in the last 24 hours has made me wish for nothing but a boring time.

My flatmate was all excited when we finally decided to go on a roadtrip to Amritsar. We started after a light dinner of toasts to keep us from dozing off. I was in the company of two photographers or should I say DSLR maniacs who wanted to stop at every possible location enroute to expand their portfolio. We opted for the shorter route although we started regretting it within the first few miles. Maybe that was the first hint I must have picked though it wasn't the last. We stayed on the course only to find us driving in a deserted road followed by a national highway that had speed bumps(really how stupid could people get??) which I couldn't notice at a distance and we had a couple of jumps. That was the second hint if we don't count the 3 stray dogs that tried to get squeezed under our wheels. We had covered half the distance and I handed over the wheels to another at a dhaba on the highway, which served hot but not so delicious pakodas and a strong coffee. Wish I had slept at the rear after that,but did I?

Frankly,we could have had a better navigator but we didn't had an option,so we paid the price of going off the tracks onto damaged roads when I woke up due to the jerks. We were soon back on the highway and all was well till we almost collided with a truck loaded with sacks of stuff,probably grains. We misjudged the speed of the truck and the tolerance/ability of the brakes, especially since we had already experienced a couple of skids before. So it resulted in our hood getting a huge dent and cracks. That instant preceding the hit, we realised the 'you can do nothing' situation when we saw ourselves sliding nearer to the truck. We still had luck on our side since we stopped where we stopped else probably our front glass pane would have taken a hit and smashed. That was the strongest hint we could have hoped for, but that didn't deter us either. We halted a few miles ahead as the photo freaks wanted to capture the rising sun, I must admit here that you gotta give it to them for identifying the best spots to view nature's beauty. After the brief stoppage, I took over again as he was not feeling confident post the incident. Our navigator told me about the time when I was sleeping. They had used my silence to their advantage and halted a couple of times to shoot on the way. Well, that explains the comparatively shorter distance covered. The other guy also had his share of hints when he drove over a huge pothole at high speed,leaving them both spellbound for a couple of seconds,or so I heard. That was the last thing I could remember before the big thing happened.

I would have covered nearly 20 miles since I started steering for the second time. It was a two lane road,enough for just two four wheelers to pass by without interference. I saw two cycles back to back at a distance. Maybe I should have honked,but they were riding in cohesion and I was under the belief none of them would deviate to right. To my shock,the one in back tried to overtake the other cycle so I had to slide left. It wouldn't have been a big deal if my front right tyre didn't burst, resulting in the car drifting further rightwards. To gain control, I applied brakes and steered left to find myself skidding perpendicular to the road. I remember that instant when we were drifting and our vehicle was nearing a tree at the left with the right side about to collide on to it. The next moment we landed parallel to the road on the left at about 20 meters from the tree. "God,what happened?? Are the other two alright?? Were the two on cycles hurt??" were the only thoughts in my mind. My door was jammed or maybe I was on a shock to open it properly. One of the many that had gathered unlocked from outside and  helped me get out. I could feel pain in  my knees and I had hit my head against the side window,so that added to the mental trauma. I walked out and tried to understand what had exactly happened. I saw parts of the engine and front bumper lying on the other side of the road. The headlight was in pieces near the tree. As I started putting the pieces together, one of the vehicles passing by and a guy in turban came over and asked a man,if all the passengers were dead,making me realise the seriousness of the accident. The sliding car took off when it neared the tree due to the slope near it and collided with the tree head on and rotated mid air to land after taking a 270 degrees turn. The front end had fragmented due to the crash and flew off during the rotation (remember the circumferential velocity concept?). All said and done, the only solace for me was that no one was hurt, well not seriously hurt atleast. Then we called the rental company who made us wait for nearly 5 hours to send a towing vehicle. The five hours of nothing kicked in the realisation mode.
I have a poster at home that has a quote by Jobs that reads "If today were the last day of your life,would you want to do what you are about to do today?". I came very close to this quote today and was wondering what all have I procrastinated and postponed for another day. Then I understood I can't change the course of my career in a day but surely I can restart the many other things I had left midway like this blog. So, here I am composing this piece.

After the vehicle was towed by the on road support service, we went to file a report with the cops. My first experience dealing with the cops directly. It took over 2 hours to get it done after a lot of requests. Then we left for Ludhiana which was the closest city from where we could get a direct bus to Delhi as my friend wasn't ready to go back by car that night after the incident in the morning. We covered the 60 kms in over 90 minutes and were surprised to find how big a city Ludhiana actually is. We booked a sleeper to Delhi and went to feast on Punjabi cuisine, that was the least of our plans we could accomplish after a day of struggle. After gulping not-matching-our-expectations food, we left the land of five rivers to the capital city.

We didn't have the experience we planned but sure did have hell of a one that I shan't forget. And I hope I wouldn't stop blogging this time.

Tradition vs Change.

     After days of blogs and videos about the general elections in the country, it was youtube browsing as usual when I landed on a Tamil debate show. It was on the topic of societal changes and its impact on the younger generation. While debating on the gains/losses of the younger lot, the predominantly older lot of panelists did little to actually probe the changes and rather struck to rhetoric and kollywood dialogues. I must admit that it is what drives the populace to watch it but it also got me into thinking about the millions of articles and speeches spread across the internet preaching the losses borne by the young folks due to the social transformations in the country. This urged me to bleed down my opinions in this blog.

       A week doesn't pass without the mention of the tradition and culture lost as a result of modernization, especially in the Tamil media. I am sure many would concede that although we wish to spend time in nature’s beauty in the countryside breathing in fresh air and enjoying the soft breeze by the farms it is evident we can’t give up the accessibility available in the congested hustling cities for more than a weekend, especially the ones habituated to having everything door delivered. Also the hypocrisy in judging the growth of IT industry is another nightmare almost every engineer faces on his/her visit to the village. While the incomes and living standards are welcomed, the long working hours and professional stress is detested. Another point argued upon was the changes in culinary practices that have led to health discrepancies arising earlier than usual. It is indeed true but it is also essential to understand that the current generation has appraised the pros and cons of the same and is growing to be more conscious than it was a decade back. Certainly the customs have changed and I do not have any animosity against the traditional customs but I am also of the opinion that traditions are dynamic. They alter as time flies by. 

        Hence it is time the infatuation for serene villages and classical fashion is given up for adaptation into relevant lifestyles because the former will be history not very long from now. As Thomas Jefferson put it “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past”, we must learn to appreciate the enhancements and swallow the deficiencies as graciously as we can.

spark.!

It has been a while since I wrote anything except cover letters, mails or essays for job applications and stuff. After a lot of deliberation and waiting I have finally decided to start a blog. The idea isn't new to me but it has taken nearly 3 years  to start blogging again after a small stint with a group in my sophomore year at college. Even  now, I am afraid the driving factor has been solitude rather than passion alone. In the final days at college on retrospective thinking I realize the actual learning that I have undergone here is not 

exactly engineering but on what I am capable of and what I am actually passionate about as one of my professors once said at IIT most of you don't learn anything except how to learn. I am sure I belong to that group of students. It might be a while before I manage to get out of the rat-race and finally start doing what I want rather than what I need to do. This blog will be a first step of the many to follow in that direction. As I have mentioned earlier, the loneliness has paved way for the time to think and introspect on various stuff varying from as dumb as the cuisines in the country to as intense as the socio-political changes in the country. These thoughts have initiated a spark to start writing. And I hope this spark lives long enough to get me involved and stops me from procrastinating again..